Ewolucja i metafora biologiczna w rosyjskiej sztuce nowoczesnej
Evolution and the Biological Metaphor in Modern Russia

Summary/Abstract: A particular feature which distinguished modern Russian art from the parallel western developments was its attachment to organic aesthetic. The organic interests of artists such as Kandinsky and Tatlin became obvious in the 1920s, but these were only the later surfacings of a structure that deeply informed very early modernist theory and that was as applicable to poetry as it was to visual arts. In its organic, evolutionary vision of the world the Russian avant-garde drew on a great variety of sources: Goethe’s morphological theories, Romantic philosophy of nature, bergsonian vitalism, Lamarck’s transformationism, and the dissemination of Darwin’s theory of evolution. As the author argues, the vision of a world in continuous evolution was responsible for the rejection of conventional representation and for a shift in the focus in art from the end result – a completed picture of a static object – to the object in flux and the very process of making the work of art.

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